After a long dry spell of new books, I am pleased to announce that we are now shipping our reprint of Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises: Or the Doctrine of Handy-Works” – the first English language book on woodworking.
If you are a hand-tool enthusiast, Moxon is basically where it all begins. His clear descriptions of tools and processes point out a fundamental truth of our craft: Not too much has changed in the last 300 years in woodworking.
Yet, even though I’ve been working with hand tools my entire career, there is always something new to learn from reading Moxon. His nuanced description of using the fore plane is a ray of bright light in a modern world that is obsessed with smoothing planes. And even his description of sharpening will give you something to think about.
Our reprint is based on the 1703 edition of Moxon’s book. And it includes all the original chapters and plates, including the sections on carpentry, blacksmith work, turning and making sundials. We made our reprint using a copy from the Early American Industries Association. And proceeds from every copy sold will go to benefit this important organization.
Creating this reprint has long been a goal of mine because I wanted to help preserve this knowledge in a high-quality, durable book. We have designed this book to last many lifetimes. The acid-free pages are gathered into signatures, which are then sewn and glued together, with the book block reinforced with a fiber-based tape and then wrapped in cloth-covered boards. The book was produced and printed entirely in the U.S.
This book will endure many, many readings without the pages falling out. And like all of our books, it will resist floods, dogs and even babies.
We also worked hard to keep the price reasonable: $24. We did this by carefully selecting the paper and the press, which is one reason this book took six months to print. We hope you’ll consider adding “Mechanick Exercises: Or the Doctrine of Handy-Works” to your collection (it is one of the backbones of our mechanical library). Or perhaps order it for a budding hand-tool woodworker to give them a firm grounding in traditional practice.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Several people have asked what is the difference between this book and “Art of Joinery.” Our new book, “Mechanick Exercises: Or the Doctrine of Handy-Works” is the complete and original text, with chapters on blacksmithing, carpentry and turning. “Art of Joinery” is merely the chapters on joinery and includes commentary from me, exploring the practices described by Moxon.
I’m almost always an open book when it comes to talking about the books we are working on at Lost Art Press. But when we began working on “Workshop Wound Care” by Dr. Jeffery Hill, I decided to keep my mouth shut.
I did this because I was surprised that no one had published a book like this before. Sure, there are some magazine articles out there. Plus some general “first aid” books that cover everything from drowning to being trampled by livestock (both are rare injuries in the woodshop).
But a book that covers workshop-specific injuries? If it exists I haven’t found it.
I was worried that if I announced the book too soon, another publisher would beat us to press by pulling together a bunch of internet drivel and plopping it onto a print-on-demand service.
After many months of work, we are now in the final stages of working on this book. And with any luck it will be out in October or November. So now I feel comfortable talking about this new title.
“Workshop Wound Care” will be in our pocket-book series. It will cost about $20. And it will delve right into the heart of what you need to know when faced with a laceration, a blood blister under the fingernail or a puncture wound from a nail.
Dr. Hill is the perfect author for this book. He is an emergency room physician and an active woodworker (you can follow him here on Instagram – or if you are an ER nerd, here’s his blog). So he knows exactly what sort of information a woodworker needs to know when it comes to injuries. And he presents information in a way that a non-medical professional can understand it.
As Megan and I edited this book, we were surprised by how much we learned about wound care. We set aside our coagulant dressings and hydrogen peroxide and have instead been using Dr. Hill’s instructions for dressing wounds so they heal faster.
Also surprising: the first aid stuff you need is not exotic. Dr. Hill recommends items you can get easily at a good pharmacist or online. We are now building out our shop’s first aid kit to match his recommendations. And this process has brought a sense of relief. Off-the-shelf first aid kits are hit or miss when it comes to having what you need for the workshop. After reading the book, I feel we will be prepared for *almost* everything.
I know that “sex” sells better than “safety.” But I hope you’ll consider adding this important book to your library so that when (not “if”) you hurt yourself, you’ll be back at the workbench in the minimum amount of time, and with as little agony as possible.
— Christopher Schwarz
Table of Content
Chapter 1: Introduction
This will be a practical guide for triaging and managing wounds in a wood shop. Along the way you’ll learn a bit about anatomy, wound healing and the pathophysiology of certain types of wounds, in addition to learning how to stop bleeding, dress wounds, and, heaven forbid, store and transport an amputated finger tip for possible re-implantation.
Chapter 2: Building out a Proper First Aid Kit
Standard first aid kits that you buy over the counter contain some useful items but usually not in proper quantities or of proper quality. Collecting select high quality equipment will ultimately be more functional.
Chapter 3: How to Stop Bleeding
Stanching the flow of blood from an open wound is of nearly obvious importance but it is often done wrong. Here we will walk through the approach to stopping bleeding from various type of wounds
Chapter 4: Wound Healing Primer
The pathophysiology of wound healing is a series of biochemical cascades; understanding (in plain language) what is happening at a cellular level can give additional insight into expectations of the wound healing process.
Chapter 5: Anatomy Primer
Understanding the anatomy of frequently injured parts of the body can help on triage the seriousness of a particular wound. We’ll cover the anatomy of the hand and face primarily.
Chapter 6: Red Flags
Judging exactly when to seek care after an injury is very much situation-dependent, however there are certain things which will absolutely necessitate additional care by a medical provider (loss of function, neuromuscular compromise, wound healing, cosmetic concerns).
Chapter 7: Tetanus is a Bad Way to Die
This chapter will cover the risks of tetanus based on exposure type and immunization status with a brief primer on what tetanus is and how infections occur.
Chapter 8: Early Wound Care Principles
Appropriate early wound care and proper irrigation, in particular, is important for decreasing the risk of infection. We’ll focus on irrigation techniques with a focus on those that have the best evidence for preventing wound infections.
Chapter 9: Wound Dressings
If a cut/abrasion can be dealt with in the shop, or if a wound has been dealt with at a doctor’s office, an understanding of how to appropriately dress the wound to ensure a clean, not overly moist healing environment. We focus on care of sutured, taped, and glued wounds and focus on bandaging techniques that will lead to secure(ish) dressings.
Chapter 10: So You Cut Your ____ Off? Now What?
This chapter will give clear instructions on how to properly store an amputated piece of your body for possible reattachment. It will also cover the immediate care, and common treatment, of amputations.
Chapter 11: Lacerations
Among the most commonly encountered injuries, the initial care and triage of lacerations depends on the nature of the wound and what caused the tissue injury. Clean cuts from knives and chisels will generally be easier to manage than tissue-loss injuries caused by power tools.
Chapter 12: Crush Injuries
A misplaced blow of a hammer or dropped workpiece will crush tissues and possibly break bones. We’ll cover the general triage and pathophysiology of these injuries with special focus on subungal hematoma (bleeding/bruising under nails).
Chapter 13: Puncture Wounds
Puncture wounds may appear innocuous but pose the greatest risk in terms of wound infection. The triage of the wounds generally revolves around the site of injury, what caused the puncture, the cleanliness of your skin (and the object that punctured you). Splinter management is covered in this chapter.
Chapter 14: High-pressure Injection Injuries
These are a type of puncture wound where the puncturing object is the air and whatever was being sprayed. These injuries can seem relatively minor at first however they can be incredibly devastating with extensive tissue loss from necrosis that develops in hours and days.
Chapter 15: Eye Injuries
The eye deserves special attention as there is risk of permanent vision loss with some types of injuries. This chapter gives consideration to corneal abrasions, metal and organic foreign bodies, and puncture wounds/open globes.
We are in the middle of prepping hundreds of parts for a July 11-15 stick chair class in partnership with The Chairmaker’s Toolbox, and I am setting aside my aversion to plastic for this one moment.
As Megan Fitzpatrick and I prepare the parts – straightening the grain, octagonalizing the bits and sometimes tapering them, I sort through them. I group the parts by color and grain. And I wrap each bundle of parts into packets with a minimal amount of stretch-wrap plastic.
There are packets of legs, short sticks, long sticks and stretchers. When all the stock prep is over, I’ll group all the packets into 10 chair kits that are matched for color and grain.
It takes a lot of extra work, but I do this for two reasons. One, it makes for better chairs. Two, even the nicest people in the world become total dork-holes when it comes to picking parts willy-nilly from a big communal pile of parts during a woodworking class.
Inevitably, one or two people end up with all the exceptional boards. And the slow students, who need all the help they can get, end up with the dregs.
To combat this problem, I started picking and grouping wood for students years ago to avoid this “Lord of the Firs” approach to distributing parts. And I have stuck to this philosophy to this day.
Why am I telling you this? If you ever find yourself facing a pile of parts in a classroom, please be kind. Don’t be a hoggy-dog and take all the best parts for yourself. Someone is watching. And they are judging you.
And Furthermore….
If you are taking a woodworking class this summer, here’s a little tip that might make you feel better about your performance during the class.
If you follow a lot of instructors, schools on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter (like I do), you’ll see a lot of posts that exclaim, “These students are KILLING it.” Or “These students are amazing! Hardworking! Insanely Talented! Oblong!”
I’ve taken enough classes and taught enough classes to tell you that this piffle is either:
Unconditional positive regard (that is undeserved).
Marketing for the school/instructor.
Woodworking in a classroom environment is both tense and fun. In my experience, everyone struggles a bit – that’s what happens when you learn stuff. There are always failures in a class – a mis-cut, a broken part, a brain fart.
If you struggle in woodworking classes (I sure do, both as a student and an instructor), then you are perfectly normal. All those social media posts are just the gauzy, filtered unreality that clogs our phones and likely contributes to a lot of self-esteem problems.
Bottom line: If you make it through a class without locking yourself in the bathroom while sobbing, throwing your tools against the wall, or making a through-mortise in your hand, then you have succeeded. (All these things have happened in classes.)
But I will say in all honesty that every student in my classes has indeed KILLED IT (as long as “it” is a tree).
We received our first load of entries today for the “Stick Chair Merit Badges.” And everyone followed instructions. Thank you!
It’s great to see all the different chairs and their personalities (and their owners). If you would like a merit badge for your shop apron or tuxedo, there is only one way to get them and here are the instructions.
If you don’t sew, and you don’t know anyone who does, you can also glue these patches on garments. I use Fabric Fusion, which is used for fabric repair. It works like woodworking glue. Apply a thin and consistent coat to the back of the patch. Tape it to the garment. Place something heavy on top of the patch for a couple hours. That’s it.
Like furniture, a glue-only joint isn’t as good as something with a mechanical interlock. But this is better than rubber cement.
Note that the “Stick Chair Merit Badges” patches are not iron-on. They need to be stitched or glued on.
The following is excerpted from “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley,” by Donald C. Williams, with photographs by Narayan Nayar. This book is the first in-depth examination of one of the most beautiful woodworking tool chests ever constructed and presents the first-ever biography of Studley (1838-1925), a piano and organ builder in Quincy, Mass. After a brief stay at the Smithsonian, the cabinet was sold to a private collector and hasn’t been seen by the public for well over a decade. Studley’s workbench has never been on public view.In this excerpt, Nayar’s approach to capturing the monumental Studley Cabinet is reverent and moving.
In the winter of 2010, Don Williams and I calculated that principal photography and primary study of the Studley ensemble could be accomplished in a single three-day trip. Photographically, we’d have one day to shoot the tool cabinet and bench, another day to shoot the tools and a day to spare for contingencies. Don had already visited the ensemble, taken survey pictures and had worked out with the owner some general rules about how we could work with the cabinet. By studying Don’s photos and making some assumptions about the room in which we would be working, I formulated a plan for a three-day shoot and packed my gear accordingly.
It took only five minutes standing in front of the tool cabinet and bench for those plans to disintegrate. Within hours, we were discussing follow-up trips and wondering how to talk the owner into letting us take the cabinet off the wall.
Principal photography ended five trips later and spanned roughly four years.
The overwhelming majority of images in “Virtuoso” are forensic. After all, the primary goal of the project was to document the cabinet, its contents and accompanying workbench both photographically and historically. To accomplish this, we worked methodically through every artifact, capturing every detail at great resolution from multiple angles. Images from this important documentary aspect of the project intentionally forgo any creative interpretation or photographic flair. They are shot with flat, diffuse lighting on simple backgrounds to reveal Studley’s ensemble with an almost clinical objectivity.
I refer to these photographs as “necessary” images – i.e. photographs taken to address the dearth of public information about the cabinet, its contents and maker. The process to capture these images was production-like, but in no way did that diminish our enthusiasm. Many, if not all, of the objects in the cabinet are not only perfectly executed, but also bear some witness to Studley himself – be it in the way the blades evince his sharpening technique, to the patina and wear patterns formed by his hands as he used his tools. Discovering these details as we worked through the collection delighted us and reminded us how important it was to shine light on these details for others.
Like thousands of people, I became acquainted with H.O. Studley many years ago through one of the famous Taunton posters. These posters feature the cabinet in its “natural” state – upright and open-kimono, enticing and not unlike a girlie magazine centerfold. Photographed in this pose and presented in two dimensions, the cabinet registers as an exquisite piece of graphic design, mesmerizing with its masterfully arranged contents, visual elements that crescendo and decrescendo, staccato accents of decorative inlays and the multi-layered tapestry of materials, color and texture. We gaze upon the poster as we would a painted masterwork, wondering what kind of mind would conceive such a thing and what kind of hands could bring it into this world.
Though the exterior of the cabinet benefits from the same care and precision of design and manufacture as its interior, it’s clear from a newspaper photo of Studley in front of the cabinet that the wide-open object is, in fact, its face. The Taunton posters have allowed the cabinet’s face to also represent the face of Henry O. Studley and, for many, of the very concept of master craftsmanship. So it somehow seems awkward to deem the ubiquitous, straight-on view of the cabinet a “necessary” image, as if the term relegates the most recognizable and revered glance of Studley’s masterpiece to mere documentation. But it’s only one view of an artifact that supplies infinite distinct and equally alluring views, and whereas extant appearances of the tool cabinet have more-or-less reduced our understanding of it to a single, postcard-like glance, “Virtuoso” has provided us the requisite space for exhaustive coverage and analysis. If the straight-on view of the cabinet is the necessary image, we felt an obligation to enrich everyone’s understanding of all that this single image contains: the cabinet’s layout, its suitability for use, its mechanical properties, its inner and sometimes hidden grandeur. The Studley tool cabinet is a woodworking fractal; as you zoom in on one detail, you not only see that detail in greater resolution, you discover a universe of new details.
We are proud to submit this collection of necessary images to the historical record. Until the day that holograms become widely available, this collection of documentary images should satisfy the factual needs of historians, artisans and connoisseurs of well-made objects. But the ensemble’s visual facts in and of themselves, however well-documented, were not enough for me. I placed a great deal of personal importance on ensuring at least some of the photographs in “Virtuoso” imparted more than a factual account of the Studley ensemble. Whereas the “necessary” images strive to capture the cabinet and its contents as physical forms, I wanted to find ways to visually convey its more metaphysical attributes. The cabinet alone has become for so many people so much more than a collection of tools in an elegant box – it has become legend. For me, it is no less than a testament to what our species is capable of. Studley’s tool cabinet represents the hope that with enough perseverance, the things we create or pursue can achieve some small fraction of its magnificence.
Having spent considerable time with the cabinet during the past few years, I can say without hesitation that the legendary status the cabinet has gained through that single image on the Taunton posters is well-deserved. I can also say that in this case, the legend is orders of magnitude less compelling than the real thing.
The First Five Minutes
Throughout the course of this project, I witnessed a dozen or so people encounter the H.O. Studley ensemble for the first time. I’ve noticed only two reactions to experiencing the cabinet in person. The first involves the liberal use of choice expletives. The second (and more common) reaction: several minutes of utter silence (though to be fair, this silence is often followed by the liberal use of choice expletives).
In person, the cabinet is far more than a three-dimensional poster. It is a monument.
I have been an armchair student of architecture and architectural history for a long time, and for several years in college I was fascinated with the Hagia Sophia. Captivated by its shifting but always-prominent role in several civilizations, I spent many hours reading its history, looking at images of its interior and exterior, and studying its incredibly ambitious engineering. I spent enough time with texts on the Hagia Sophia that I came to refer to it as “Sophie.”
Years later I traveled to Istanbul in a pilgrimage of sorts to Sophie. However academically familiar I may have been with her – however many photographs and architectural drawings I had pored over – walking through its nave and standing under its dome made my palms sweat and my head swirl. As is the case with many of the world’s great religious structures, the scale of the Hagia Sophia filled me with equal parts awe and insignificance. I spent a whole afternoon in the museum, wandering its main floor and upper balcony, looking up at the architectural details and murals, realizing that the building I thought I knew existed only in books. The Hagia Sophia was not Sophie, and only by visiting it in person could I feel the weight of its history, grasp the scale of its majesty and find inspiration even in its imperfections.
When encountering the Studley cabinet in person, I believe all first-timers experience an even more amplified version of what I felt in Istanbul. The Studley cabinet features architectural themes found in and on many of the world’s greatest monuments, and in the first five minutes you stand before the cabinet, your eyes can’t help but lead you through ornamental doors and make you gaze through myriad windows. You are compelled to follow fences that divide the interior into courtyards delineated by the lines and shadows of numerous arches, buttresses and columns. In those first five minutes you take a tour of a wood, metal, pearl and ivory palace so captivating and opulent that you forget that the cabinet is, in fact, smaller than you. Witnessing in person the masterpiece that one talented Mason created with his own two hands is as much an encounter with the sublime as standing in the shadows of structures many times its size, with masonry assembled by hundreds, if not thousands, of hands. It is no wonder that many people forget to speak when confronted with such concentrated grandeur. How does one capture this with a camera?
The truth is, one cannot. Not entirely, anyway. So the images in “Virtuoso” that carry the most personal significance for me are the ones that encapsulate some small fraction of the awe that overcomes anyone standing in front of the cabinet for those first five minutes. During the course of four years, I searched for ways to photographically convey the cabinet not as a postcard or a painting, but as an architectural space. Just as my Sophie could only ever exist on paper, for many of us, Studley has been to date a single image of a cabinet frozen in one quintessential pose. As you move through “Virtuoso,” you will, of course, see more of the H.O. Studley ensemble than has been historically possible for all but a select few. But if I’ve done my job, some of these images will bring you on the journey that I’ve been fortunate enough to take on your behalf during the last four years, and as you turn these pages, you’ll find yourself rendered mute, then apologizing to any sensitive souls within earshot.